{"id":329361,"date":"2020-02-04T18:16:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T21:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=329361"},"modified":"2020-02-04T19:02:06","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T22:02:06","slug":"revisiting-machado-de-assis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/revisiting-machado-de-assis\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Machado de Assis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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National Archive \/ Correio da Manh\u00e3 Fund <\/span><\/a> The novelist in 1904National Archive \/ Correio da Manh\u00e3 Fund <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Every poet who becomes a classic was initially considered strange and unique, argues US critic Harold Bloom in his famous 1973 book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry<\/em>. Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908), who was also a poet, seems to fit this definition well. Now considered central in Brazil’s literature, the Rio de Janeiro author had his talent immediately recognized by his contemporaries; however, they initially classified him as a unique case, displaced from the local literary milieu. In his research analyzing the reception of the author’s work, H\u00e9lio de Seixas Guimar\u00e3es, from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), describes how it was only in the 1950s that writers and critics began incorporating Assis into modern heritage.<\/p>\n

Guimar\u00e3es explains that, between the mid-nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Brazilian writers that were valued most were those who featured the so-called “local color” in their works, as well as realist and naturalist authors who were committed to directly representing the social, economic, and political situation of the country. In this sense, Guimar\u00e3es evaluates, Assis was not in line with his contemporaries, “as he did broach these topics, but in a different, almost always deeper and more subtle way.” \u201cCritics of the time claimed that, as a writer, he was concerned with analyzing what goes on inside the characters, leaving aside, for example, descriptions of nature and customs, which were common for other writers of the period,” he clarifies. Pioneer critics, such as Silvio Romero (1851\u20131914), Jos\u00e9 Ver\u00edssimo (1857\u20131916), and Araripe J\u00fanior (1848\u20131911) argued that Assis should be analyzed as an isolated case in local literature, and that the humor in his novels placed him closer to the British tradition. “When writing about the history of Brazilian literature, Romero mentioned Assis in footnotes; Ver\u00edssimo, on the other hand, dedicated a chapter exclusively to his work, apart from studies on other authors from the same period,” says the researcher.<\/p>\n

The recognition of Assis’s talent, coupled with his nonconformity to the characteristics that marked Brazilian literature in the early years of the twentieth century, resulted in his being seen as an academic writer, attuned to traditional values and concerned very little with reflecting on national identity. It is also for this reason that modernist authors, such as M\u00e1rio de Andrade (1893\u20131945), Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902\u20131987), and Monteiro Lobato (1882\u20131948) were ambivalent in their analyses of his work. “To them, Assis was a difficult figure to swallow. M\u00e1rio de Andrade, for example, wrote that he admired Assis, but did not love him,” reports the researcher. As literary critic Ieda Lebensztayn points out, modernist writers sought to break new ground in national literature by taking a stand against previous trends. In this context, Assis\u2014who founded the Brazilian Academy of Languages (ABL) in 1897\u2014was considered a negative influence, as he did not make an effort to subvert previous movements and “lived comfortably as a bourgeois government official,” in the words of M\u00e1rio de Andrade. “Andrade had reservations about the fact that Assis was never outspoken about his mixed race status and preferred instead to adopt British customs. At the same time, he admired Assis’s dedication to art and his potential as a critic,” says Lebensztayn.<\/p>\n

She reveals that Monteiro Lobato, however, when analyzing the artistic consequences of Assis’s social trajectory, stated that his humble origin and social ascension allowed him to write about the social stratification of the country in a perfectly intuitive way. But they also motivated him, in practice, to cultivate his own class isolation, leading him to found the ABL, for example\u2014an arena exclusive to the intellectual elite. Lebensztayn is coediting, along with Guimar\u00e3es, a book that features the collected reactions of 34 writers, from 1908 to 1939, to the figure and work of Machado de Assis. “He is a reference point for every fiction writer, with elements they want to either emulate or distance themselves from in the construction of their own identities,” explains the researcher.<\/p>\n

Still regarding the modernist writers, Guimar\u00e3es reports that the development of Drummond’s relationship to Assis is representative of that of other authors. “I gathered texts in which the poet, over the course of six decades, deals with the rather uncomfortable figure of Assis, whom he repudiated in his youth but came to fully love when older,” reveals the researcher, who examines the specific case of the Minas Gerais poet in the book Amor nenhum dispensa uma gota de \u00e1cido \u2013 Escritos de Carlos Drummond de Andrade sobre Machado de Assis<\/em> (No love goes without a drop of acid: Carlos Drummond de Andrade on Machado de Assis; Tr\u00eas Estrelas, 2019). To illustrate this, he recalls that Drummond dedicates to his predecessor the 1958 poem A um bruxo, com amor<\/em> (To a wizard, with love), considered one of the most significant tributes from one writer to another in Brazilian literature. “In writing this poem, Drummond seems to fully incorporate Assis into his own poetry,” he notes.<\/p>\n

In the late 1950s, Drummond also led a campaign against the ABL’s project to build a mausoleum where Assis’s remains\u2014then buried in a Rio de Janeiro cemetery\u2014would be transferred. “Drummond argued that this would represent a kind of retrogression to the place Assis occupied in the decades after his death, when he was thought of as an academic writer and a stranger to the local literary environment,” he says.<\/p>\n

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Brazilian Academy of Languages<\/span><\/a> Writers carry Machado de Assis’s coffin out of the Brazilian Academy of Languages in 1908Brazilian Academy of Languages<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Publications in periodicals<\/strong>
\nAs part of the process of revisiting his literary journey, new facets of Assis have also been revealed through the analysis of texts that were considered minor until the mid-2000s. Silvia Maria Azevedo, from the School of Sciences and Languages of S\u00e3o Paulo State University (FCL-UNESP), Assis campus, in two books published last September as a result of her research paper A colabora\u00e7\u00e3o de Machado de Assis na Semana Ilustrada<\/em> (Machado de Assis’s contributions to Semana Ilustrada<\/em>), has recognized and gathered his chronicles that were published in the magazine between 1869 and 1876, under the pseudonym “Dr. Semana” (Dr. Week). “Up until then, it was thought that Dr. Semana was a collective pseudonym and that only a few of the texts were Assis’s. However, I found that all of them were written by him,” she reveals.<\/p>\n

According to Azevedo, this discovery was made possible through the analysis of stylistic resources used by Assis, which were also present in the chronicles of Dr. Semana. In one of them, “cr\u00edtica \u00e0s avessas” (criticism turned on its head), the author praised certain literary references considered to be of low quality. “Claiming things opposite to what he truly means, in an ironic tone, is typical of Assis,” she reports. Azevedo also mentions the frequent quoting of playwrights William Shakespeare (1564\u20131616) and Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, or Moli\u00e8re (1622\u20131673), as another element that aids in proving his authorship of the chronicles. In line with Guimar\u00e3es’s analyses, Azevedo indicates that the chronicles reveal Assis’s involvement with issues of his time. “They prove that the criticisms of his contemporaries about his supposed indifference to the political and social reality of Brazil were unfounded,” she argues.<\/p>\n

L\u00facia Granja, from the Biosciences, Languages, and Exact Sciences Institute (IBILCE) at UNESP, S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 do Rio Preto campus, states that subjects addressed by the writer in the chronicles he published in periodicals were later recreated in his fictional works. As a result of her associate professorship thesis, last year Granja published Machado de Assis \u2013 Antes do livro, o jornal: Suporte, m\u00eddia e fic\u00e7\u00e3o<\/em> (Machado de Assis \u2013 Before the novel, the newspaper: Support, media and fiction), in which she analyzes the dialogue between the texts Assis published in periodicals and his fiction writing. \u201cThe revaluation of genres that have been drowned out by novels reveals unknown aspects of his writing career. Five of his nine novels were published in sequence in periodicals before being published as books; same for nearly all of his short stories, which number about 200,” she points out.<\/p>\n

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Personal archives \/ H\u00e9lio Guimar\u00e3es<\/span><\/a> Os Correios (Brazilian Post Office) released a stamp in memory of the writer in 1958Personal archives \/ H\u00e9lio Guimar\u00e3es<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Official acclaim<\/strong>
\nHis shift from a displaced writer in Brazil’s literary scene to a central author in modern history had its turning point in 1939, when then-President Get\u00falio Vargas (1882\u20131954) decreed celebrations to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Assis’s birth through events involving the National Library, the National Book Institute, and the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service. The initiatives involved publishing commemorative editions of his novels, organizing an exhibition, and even issuing coins and stamps. “It was the first major case of literary acclaim in Brazil mobilizing a large official and editorial apparatus. Assis was taken by the Estado Novo<\/em> [1937\u20131945] as an exemplary man and author, who fostered the development of a narrative centered on the trajectory of a poor boy born in Morro do Livramento who ascended to the Brazilian Academy of Languages,” explains H\u00e9lio Guimar\u00e3es. Around the same time, critics such as Augusto Meyer (1902\u20131970) and L\u00facia Miguel Pereira (1901\u20131959) began to fit him into the national and international literary tradition, a movement that became consolidated in the 1950s, when Antonio Candido (1918\u20132017) published Forma\u00e7\u00e3o da literatura brasileira<\/em> (The formation of Brazilian literature; Livraria Martins Editora, 1959).<\/p>\n

The USP researcher also notes that, in the 30 years following the novelist’s death, the reality of his blackness was suppressed. “In a letter to Jos\u00e9 Ver\u00edssimo, Joaquim Nabuco [1849\u20131910] says he sees only the Greek in Assis,” he claims, noting that in his death certificate the novelist is classified as “white”. This situation began to change after a biography written by L\u00facia Miguel Pereira in the 1930s framed Assis’s blackness positively and as the reason for his ability to see Brazilian society from different angles. “Today, Assis is claimed and presented as a black author\u2014which illustrates how current discussions in the country continue to apply to him from the biographical perspective.”<\/p>\n

Still as a result of his research, in a book to be published later this year, Guimar\u00e3es will address Assis’s process of gaining acclaim after 1939, a period in which the internationalization of his work gained momentum, with the first versions of his novels being translated into English. In the wake of this process, Helen Caldwell (1904\u20131987), a professor at the University of California, translated Dom Casmurro<\/em> in 1953 and produced a critical study on the 1899 novel. “Caldwell challenged the narrator’s authority and questioned his version of the marriage of Capitu, one of the characters, thus changing how the novel was traditionally read,” explains Guimar\u00e3es. He stresses that this view had an impact on how Brazilian critics interpreted the novel; since the 1970s, they have argued that Assis’s novels contain criticism of how Brazilian society was formed. Today, Guimar\u00e3es states, 180 years after his birth, these readings are central to understanding the author.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nTranslators, translations, and editions of Machado de Assis’s work in English \u2013 Helen Caldwell and the University of California Press (n\u00ba 19\/00643-5<\/a>); Grant Mechanism <\/strong>Grant for Research Abroad; Principal Investigator <\/strong>H\u00e9lio de Seixas Guimar\u00e3es (USP); Research Site<\/strong> University of California at Santa Barbara; Investment<\/strong> R$18,924.42.<\/p>\n

Books<\/strong>
\nGUIMAR\u00c3ES, H. S. and LEBENSZTAYN, I. (ed.). Escritor por escritor, Machado de Assis segundo seus pares 1908\u20131939.<\/strong> S\u00e3o Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2019.
\nAZEVEDO, S. M. Machado de Assis \u2013 Badaladas Dr. Semana<\/strong>. <\/em>S\u00e3o Paulo: Nankin Editorial, 2019.
\nGRANJA, L. Machado de Assis – Antes do livro, o jornal: suporte, m\u00eddia e fic\u00e7\u00e3o<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Editora Unesp Digital, 2018.
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